The Imagery of Marriage
Mill Observes, “The association of men with women in daily life is much closer and more complete than it ever was before. Men's life is more domestic. Formerly, their pleasures and chosen occupations were among men, and in men's company: their wives had but a fragment of their lives. At the present time, the progress of civilization, and the turn of opinion against the rough amusements and convivial excesses which formerly occupied most men in their hours of relaxation—together with (it must be said) the improved tone of modern feeling as to the reciprocity of duty which binds the husband towards the wife—have thrown the man very much more upon home and its inmates, for his personal and social pleasures: while the kind and degree of improvement which has been made in women's education, has made them in some degree capable of being his companions in ideas and mental tastes, while leaving them, in most cases, still hopelessly inferior to him. His desire of mental communion is thus in general satisfied by a communion from which he learns nothing.”
Men’s engrossment in the domestic life is influential in nurturing unqualified camaraderie between them and their spouses. Civilization has underwritten the fundamental intent of matrimony which is to cultivate affection and reciprocated comradeship among couples. Accordingly, marriage is more gratifying for it is exemplified by intimate links between couples. Companionship is what makes matrimony valuable for couples complement each other. Obliteration of the beliefs regarding the women’s lowliness is contributory in transforming the undercurrents of marriage.
The Imagery of Happiness
Mill exploits the imagery of a nation to illustrate the import of absolute contentment and its connexion to gender equivalence: “What citizen of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skilful administration, in return for the abdication of freedom? Even if he could believe that good and skilful administration can exist among a people ruled by a will not their own, would not the consciousness of working out their own destiny under their own moral responsibility be a compensation to his feelings for great rudeness and imperfection in the details of public affairs? Let him rest assured that whatever he feels on this point, women feel in a fully equal degree. Whatever has been said or written, from the time of Herodotus to the present, of the ennobling influence of free government—the nerve and spring which it gives to all the faculties, the larger and higher objects which it presents to the intellect and feelings, the more unselfish public spirit, and calmer and broader views of duty, that it engenders, and the generally loftier platform on which it elevates the individual as a moral, spiritual, and social being—is every particle as true of women as of men.”
Happiness cannot be accomplished in the absence of outright self-sufficiency. Individuals whose liberty is constrained are unquestionably inhibited. Freedom is an imperative component for equivalence between males and females; denying women the same freedom that is accorded to men routinely occasions gender dissimilarity. Women cannot be definitely content when their self-determination is stifled. Therefore, women’s autonomy and gender parity are conjoint inevitabilities that cannot be replaced.
